How to: make a track for Assetto Corsa

[r@m]

Hi guys I just joined to find out if there are any details about track making for Assetto Corsa yet, I've had a browse around and it seems the format will be the same/ similar to Netkar.?
Info is very thin on the ground, as are examples / tutorials, all I've manged to find are a few videos in the Italian language, which is not my native tongue, so doesn't explain very much.
Are there any technical breakdown of formats and specifications for the game anywhere, animations, gfx, effects etc? Any detailed workflows from 3DS Max to Netkar ?
I've been modding GP4 for some time now but grown tired of it's graphical limitations, so I've just started researching AC and NKP.
Assetto Corsa looks the real deal with full modding capabilities, so for me wins hands down over PCars, which is a total lockout in all departments.

Any advice would be appreciated.

btw, I have some of Melbourne, and a 80% complete Abu Dhabi, built from scratch by my own fair fingers, so I have plenty of material to work with.

 

[BanjoMaster]

As an aside, does anyone know if anyone is working on the new Inje Autopia track? I saw the renders and construction pics from last year, but hadn't realised they're actually hosting events now. The track looks like decent fun for a new, modern design, and the backdrop is just incredible. Easily the most epic location of any new track I've seen in many a year!

S-Tai SLS GT3 on-board vid of the track:

 

[Hampus Andersson]

cool track!

Here´s one as well, Atlanta Motorsports Park, actually designed by Mr. Tilke but you would not guess it if you just looked at the layout. This is what Tilke does with free hands and some elevations.

 

[r@m]

Hi guys long time no post, rl is not playing ball at the moment

Those tracks look cool, but as usual the main issue is good reference material.

I have a question about garage placement, is there a rigid area in the game when cars are parked in the garage ?

eg: Codemasters F1 and GP4 both have different garage placements which dictate the positioning (and accuracy) of the pit buildings, which cannot be adjusted.
What's the score with AC ?
I've made some progress with Melbourne pit complex but need to know if I model it with complete accuracy, I will be able to position the "starting point" of the cars in AC.
This screenshot shows the structure needed for GP4, but it's not accurate and means the buildings are slightly out of proportion also each team has 2 garage sections, where in rl each team usually has 3. I also couldn't model the sections in between the garages accurately as in GP4 it's a rigid 12 garages next to each other with no gaps. So that section right n the center if the image can't reach the floor as it should do. And you can see it's all very much elongated on the X Axis which is driving my proportion obsession nuts

 

[Mr Whippy]

Nice work on the pit building. I like the level of detail you've added, it can make it easier to then build from it later for game meshes/LOD's etc.
The scale does look incorrect though if those people inside are anything to go by so certainly something to look at.
But I think generally the proportions are good, so it's probably just an overall scale up/down that you need?


Just as a tool to help people along, if they have seen the new tools like 123D and other things like it, they might be useful to build up point clouds or rough 3d meshes of these types of structures.
You can then take the total length from satellite imagery or other references and start to get the scales quite accurate.

Or just good old photo matching to a few high quality reference images.


For tracks I've always found topology the number one pain to get right. Ie, slopes, hills, cambers etc.

If you could get a person with a radio controlled plane/helicopter to fly over and get hundreds of aerial shots for photo matching that would be very nice... as accurate as you'd need for most jobs unless you had a laser scanner spare

Dave

 

[r@m]

Cheers Dave, I've never successfully managed to get any kind of camera/perspective match working properly in Max, totally impossible to achieve accuracy using this method and incredibly restrictive to model and navigate.
I much prefer satellite imagery, of course the problem with that is generating the correct building heights, I resorted to importing models from other racing games, but all use there own scale and dimensions, so basically I'm still nowhere with this, I hate playing this "guessing game" when modeling.
I've tried measure tool in PS, camera/perspective match etc, all end in frustration and conflicts/inaccuracies, the best result is to eyeball and tweak until you get there.

123D looks overkill for something like this and I don't have the patience to navigate through all the hype and info to get to something basic like pulling a 3d building from a photo.

Those pit buildings were being modeled for GP4, but I'm also tired of it's restrictions and overall crap graphics quality, there's no way that amount of detail could ever be used in GP4 without a whole host of optimization, reduction, rendering detail to 2d planes, and baking ambient occlusion / lights etc.
I used the base mesh from the game to build the garages and quickly ran into problems with proportion scale and accuracy...anyway I won't go on, I think I'm done with that game I've wasted a lot of time and have many unfinished projects because of my frustration with the game engine limitations.

As far as AC is concerned I still don't know what scale to use in Max, again GP4 restricts you to working in tiny scale in Max which can cause problems.
All my questions will be answered when I can load a track in Max and learn the required workflow, but until then I'm modeling this as in real life with as much detail as possible.
I'm not sure if it's still active but I'll look into the Skype talk to developers section, also nothke has been helpful I'll pick his brains too
When i get the time I'm going to put all the track details together and start a WIP thread in the modding section.

 

[r@m]

Ok, pedantic i know, but If I'm modding for a sim with such accuracy and attention to detail then why not apply the same discipline to the tracks ?

First issue, I imported the pit complex from the simcade ConMasters F1 2012, and aligned it to sat image.
Each "Team" has only 2 garage slots whereas in real life each team usually has 3 slots.
Each pit complex building should have 9 slots not 6, also 2 windows per slot not 3.



Second issue is the gap between buildings, in the game they have squished it down, in real life it's much wider with more construction in-between.



That's why i asked about garage positioning, from the looks of it most games have some kind of restriction in the garage areas which result in "artistic license" alterations to the details, so does AC have the same or is it more flexible ?

 

[Mr Whippy]

I can imagine garages are tweaked so each slot is bigger so drivers can get into them more easily or something like that. The slots do look pretty tight in real life vs the two wider ones.

But I'd always go for reality. That is the whole point we are here and not playing Burnout or the more recent NFS titles with too much arcade thrown in.


As for matching in Max, I'm not sure if you can 'get' a version of it but the ImageModeler that came around 2009 is really very very good for this type of job.

Autodesk haven't offered anything with the same capabilities before or since (they don't do anything any more like this since apparently 123D can do it, which it can't at all) so it's well worth a look.

I agree, the built in camera match isn't very good at all these days. What surprises me is why they didn't just add the ImageModeler engine into the Max Camera Match.

Dave

 

[r@m]

Ahh that's the one... Image Modeller, basic 3d models from photo's..I forgot what it was called....I'm downloading it now will give it a go thanks.
Any words directed at Autodesk as to what they "should" do are a waste of time & space, they simply do not listen. I reckon Max is dead anyway they haven't "developed" it for years. pathetic company.

 

[r@m]

Testing embed, I just cut a chunk off the model and threw it up on Sketchfab. Can't seen to get iframes working here.

Melbourne Pit (click to view in 3D)

 

[Dinca Andrei]

Looks A class

 

[Mr Whippy]

r@m, yep Image Modeller is good, well worth using for these kinds of hobby tasks where you can't get much better than photos... a bit slower vs laser scans but in the end the accuracy can be just as good.

As per scale, set system units to metres and then Max units probably to metres too.

Can still be a bit fiddly though if you are building props in the same scene, stuff like lights and fire extinguishers and 'smaller' things... sometimes better to build those in another project file/s with cm system scale and import into your main scene and convert to metres when you do so.


Brmmmmm!

 

[r@m]

I didn't have much success with Image Modeller, tried a few times but I was losing accuracy and perspective. I couldn't find decent tutorials about building from a single image, most assume you have taken 3 of 4 shots yourself.

Ugh....the eternal Max / Scale issues , but yeah I've been using generic and assuming 1 unit = 1 meter, it works for both GP4 and Codemasters, so it shouldn't be much of an issue, should be pretty straight forward once I export/import a few times.

My current PC can only run the tech preview at around 7 fps (shitty onboard graphics) so a new workstation is on the todo list.

 

[Mr Whippy]

Haha, yep scale issues ahoy.

Best to just use system units appropriate for what you are making. Metres for tracks is good, but centimetres for detailed props is maybe more ideal if you build them elsewhere and import and populate the track later.

Generic units are fine and I used them, and still do for lots of stuff. If you know all your track stuff is in metres in the gaming engine then it's the same thing...


Haha, tell me about the FPS. I run an old GTX275 here which does the trick for most stuff but it's still nicer to run higher res and higher quality with good smooth FPS still

I have my eye on a GTX 660 TOP Asus jobby which seems pretty good bang per buck right now.


As per Image Modeller, it should work ok with several shots. I never used it to try reconstruct from one image... I'm not even sure it's designed to do that.

I think in those cases a manual job will be better, using lots of references to try line things up... but it's gonna be slow and tedious and error prone.
Are there really so few images around of the reference object?

Dave

 

[r@m]

I have tons of reference images (probably too many), but it would be nice to know the "exact" dimensions of the buildings. All those ref images could be narrowed down to a handful if I could stand in front of the buildings with a camera.
It's my main beef with modding... using 3rd party images, you spend more time searching for decent reference than you do modelling.
Anyway it's close enough for now, I'm moving onto other parts of the track before I get sick of the sight of them.

I still don't know if Melbourne is a popular choice for a track for AC, it's just something I started to make for GP4 before getting sick of the limitations of the game engine, maybe a better idea to start a poll and see what people really want.

 

[BanjoMaster]

If you start a poll, you'll get 1000 posts requesting 1001 different tracks! Melbourne is as good a choice as any if you've already begun it. Plus I haven't seen it being started for any of the othernewer sims, so you fire away

 

[Mr Whippy]

Do a good version of any track and it will be enjoyed by everyone.

Personally I'm more interested in real roads when we are driving road cars (which AC has many of in it)... so if I ever make anything it'll be something along those lines.
Getting reference material is also really easy as you can go drive it and measure it in real life very easily.

Or perhaps a local club track or something? Small club tracks can be as much fun as big international type tracks.



I kinda lose motivation working on big fancy circuits once I hit the point where I want more accuracy but can't get it. You just end up spending hours referencing photos and weak resources to end up with an iffy end result which you are not happy with.

I can see why you are losing some motivation if you can't find good images as reference.


Cheers

Dave

 

[r@m]

If you start a poll, you'll get 1000 posts requesting 1001 different tracks! Melbourne is as good a choice as any if you've already begun it. Plus I haven't seen it being started for any of the othernewer sims, so you fire away

To be honest I'm kinda sick of the sight of it

I kinda lose motivation working on big fancy circuits once I hit the point where I want more accuracy but can't get it. You just end up spending hours referencing photos and weak resources to end up with an iffy end result which you are not happy with.

Exactly !

Personally I'm more interested in real roads when we are driving road cars (which AC has many of in it)... so if I ever make anything it'll be something along those lines.

Yes I'm with you there, C'était un rendez vous - Claude Lelouch 1976 through the streets of Paris would be cool, or the route Steve McQueen took in Bullit...something different and something special, I'm bored with F1 circuits.

 

[betterstranger]

I'd love some standard roads... like in early NFS series... some roads in the cloudy Alps, some roads in rainy Britain, roads through sunny French Riviera, roads between tiny Swiss villages...

That's something I'd surely enjoy!

 

[Harry Platt]

I'd love some standard roads... like in early NFS series... some roads in the cloudy Alps, some roads in rainy Britain, roads through sunny French Riviera, roads between tiny Swiss villages...

That's something I'd surely enjoy!

Surely Kunos could just pop up to the Stelvio one day and laserscan it?

Great thing about real roads are that you wouldn't need to license them... theoretically. (Can governments try and claim that you would need to pay them to recreate a public road?)

 

[Lee Knight]

Isle of Man Government was one of the sponsors of Jester Interactive's TTSuperbikes & more recently the Orange New South Wales Tourism Council commissioned/paid for Krunch to build 1953 Gnoo Blas, I think with quality work local government branches would actually pay YOU to build a track...
If your loosing interest in Melbourne it might be worth putting it aside for now & doing something you enjoy a bit more & coming back to it at a later date...
Also remember there are plenty of classic disused tracks out there that leave a little more room to interpretation of their representation...
They don't ALLL have to be as specific as you would of a current circuit for it still to be an enjoyable drive or build...
I know your not using BTB but seeing as the 'Sim Modding' section can no longer be readily found here at RD it might be worth stopping by the BTB section occasionally...
Lastly, for building 3D buildings & matching to photo's, have you considered using SketchUp?
I know it's not the best but it does a pretty good job all the same & can later be 'tweaked' in 3D Max...

All the best, & BTW, your track looks freaking awesome, even if I am a closed public roads for racing man myself